Place of Storms
Sara Craven

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Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

ENDPAGE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘ANDY—please! You’ve just got to help me. There’s no one else I can turn to.’

From her seat on the Persian rug in front of the fire, Andrea Weston thought wryly that Clare’s flair for the dramatic was going to be wasted on anything so mundane as marriage. But this time—this time she was going to turn a deaf ear to it, and to that deliberate use of the diminutive of her name. She had heard it all before when Clare wanted to be rescued from some childhood or schooldays scrape of her own making.

‘No one?’ she asked caustically, letting her eyes rest on the magnificent sapphire and diamond ring adorning Clare’s left hand.

Clare noticed the direction of her gaze and shuddered.

‘Peter mustn’t know.’ She sounded genuinely panic-stricken. ‘Promise me you won’t tell him.’

‘Oh, I can safely promise that.’ Andrea pushed back her long fall of chestnut hair. ‘How can I tell him what I don’t know myself?’ She saw Clare open her mouth and hastily forestalled her. ‘And I don’t want to know either, Clare. We’re not children any longer. I may have been able to talk you out of trouble with Nanny and Sister Benedict, but you’re a big girl now. You’ve got to learn to solve your own problems.’

‘Oh, Andy!’ Clare’s shoulders drooped forlornly. ‘Don’t be hard on me.’

‘It’s time someone was,’ Andrea told her honestly. ‘Uncle Max has spoiled you rotten for years, and you know it.’

Clare nodded humbly, her enormous blue eyes filled with tears. ‘I do know—but you’ve got to help me, Andy. You’re my last hope.’

‘Nonsense!’ Andrea hoped her voice was sufficiently robust. ‘Whatever you’ve done, my advice is go to Peter and make a clean breast of it. You’re going to be married to him in six weeks and you can’t hope to hide things from him then …’ Her voice trailed away uneasily as Clare buried her face in her hands and began to cry in real earnest.

‘Oh, love!’ Andrea got up and went to sit on the big white chesterfield next to Clare, putting a comforting arm round her cousin’s heaving shoulders. ‘It can’t be as bad as all that, surely.’

‘But it can.’ Clare’s voice was choked with sobs. ‘I’m in such a mess—and there may not be any wedding, and I’ll make Daddy ill again, I know it.’

Andrea sighed. ‘Then you’d better tell me,’ she said wearily. An awful thought occurred to her. She stared at her cousin. ‘Clare—you haven’t … I mean, you aren’t …’

‘Oh, no.’ Clare shook her head vigorously. In spite of her distress a faintly dreamy look crossed her lovely features. ‘Anyway, Peter has always said he has far too much respect for me to try and anticipate our marriage vows.’

‘How—how honourable of him,’ Andrea said a little wildly. Her own private view of Clare’s fiancé was that he was a stuffed shirt, and Clare’s artless disclosure seemed to confirm this. Clare was an entrancingly beautiful girl with her shining cap of blonde hair, and a figure just verging towards the voluptuous, and Andrea could not imagine any red-blooded man being able to resist at least an attempt to make love to her. However, Clare seemed convinced that he was the only man who could make her happy and Andrea supposed that this was really all that mattered. Her own doubts about whether Peter would ever have proposed to Clare if she had not been Maxwell Weston’s daughter she kept strictly to herself.

‘All right,’ she said gently. ‘Then what is wrong?’

Clare gave a long sigh that seemed to come up from her toes. ‘There’s—there’s someone else,’ she said.

‘Another man?’ Andrea could hardly believe it. Admittedly Clare had played the field before she met Peter. Since her early teens there had hardly been a time when she was not madly in love with someone, either in the ecstatic throes of first meetings, or the tears and recriminations of parting. Yet Andrea would have been ready to swear that her devotion to Peter had been utterly single-minded. ‘Do I know him?’

Clare shook her head. ‘He’s—French.’

‘I suppose you met him when you were staying with Martine in Paris.’ Andrea racked her brains to remember some of the details of Clare’s scanty letters. ‘Surely it can’t be that appalling Jacques! Oh, Clare …’

‘No, no,’ Clare assured her hastily. ‘Though it is all his fault indirectly,’ she added, her eyes kindling with resentment. ‘If I hadn’t been so absolutely devastated about him, I’d never have contemplated getting involved with the Levallier man.’

‘So his name’s Levallier,’ Andrea persevered. ‘How did you meet him?’

‘I didn’t.’ Clare gave her a limpid look.

Andrea closed her eyes and prayed for patience. ‘You can’t possibly be in love with someone you’ve never met—not even you …’

‘But I’m not in love with him. I tell you I’ve never set eyes on him. It was just … oh, when Jacques threw me over like that for that awful Janine, I just wanted to die. I’ve never felt so wretched before. Nothing seemed to matter any more, so when he wrote and suggested we should get married, it seemed a godsend—an absolute face-saver.’

Andrea stared at her, slim arched brows raised incredulously. ‘A complete stranger wrote to you and proposed?’

‘Not exactly. I—I had been writing to him before that. He’s a cousin of Martine’s—second or third, from what she said, but her family don’t talk about him much. He’s some kind of black sheep, apparently. I think he must have been living abroad somewhere, but he’s come back because he’s inherited this chateau in Auvergne, and he wrote to Martine’s parents, extending an olive branch, I think. They were highly indignant about this,’ Clare added reflectively. ’Martine and I thought it was a shame, and so we decided if they didn’t want to reply to his letter, we would. We sent a joint letter, as a joke really.’

‘And he replied?’

‘Oh yes. It was rather a nice letter—amused, as if he guessed what we were up to. But Martine wouldn’t write again. She was afraid her parents would find out and cancel the winter sports holiday they were planning, so I wrote the next letter myself. Eventually we had quite a correspondence going. I told him all kinds of things. I even told him about Jacques when it was all over. It was marvellous to be able to pour it all out to someone who wasn’t actually involved, or who knew either of us. And that was when he proposed.’

‘But why? Did he give a reason, or was he just sorry for you?’

‘No. He made that very clear. In fact,’ Clare said rather coldly. ‘He implied I’d asked for it. No, the proposal was purely a business proposition. He stressed that. He needed a wife urgently to settle some legal difficulty—he didn’t really specify what—and as I was so miserable and at a loss, he thought we could help each other.’

‘But surely you ended it there—when you saw what deep waters you were getting into?’

Clare did not meet her cousin’s clear hazel eyes. ‘I—accepted,’ she said after a pause.

‘Clare!’

‘Oh, don’t look at me like that. I told you—I was so desperate about Jacques, I’d have done anything. I’d have married Bluebeard if he’d asked me. And this was a way out. If I was engaged to this Blaise Levallier, then Jacques would see I didn’t care. Which I didn’t, of course,’ she added wonderingly. ‘I wish I’d realised it earlier.’

Andrea groaned. ‘So do I,’ she said with feeling. ‘You must have been out of your mind!’

Clare considered. ‘I felt very calm, actually. After what I’d just been through with Jacques, a marriage de convenance sounded like bliss, I don’t mind telling you. I meant to go through with it, too. He sent me some things to sign—and some money—to buy my trousseau with, I suppose. I hadn’t told him about Daddy, and he probably thought I was living au pair with Martine’s family.’

‘Probably.’ Andrea looked at her in consternation. ‘What did you do with the money?’

‘I didn’t spend it,’ Clare assured her. ‘I might have done, I admit, but then Daddy had his first heart attack. When Mummy sent for me, I forgot about everything else.’

She got up and walked across the room to the small Regency bureau against one wall. ‘The money’s all here—every franc. You can count it if you like.’

‘No, thanks.’ Andrea put out a restraining arm and caught her cousin’s skirt. ‘Never mind the money. Just tell me the rest. There is more, I presume.’

‘Yes.’ Clare returned to the chesterfield and sat down. ‘But you know it really. I met Peter—I think we both knew at once there would never be anyone else—and Blaise went out of my head altogether. When I did think about it, it just seemed like a bad dream.’

‘I can imagine,’ Andrea said drily. ‘And when did you wake up?’

Clare reached for her cream leather handbag. ‘When these came.’ She drew a small packet of letters secured by a rubber band out of the bag. ‘Martine sent the first one on.’ She sent Andrea a stricken look. ‘It was full of details about the arrangements for the wedding. I was petrified. I—I didn’t answer. I hoped he might think the letter hadn’t arrived and just—give up.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘No,’ Clare admitted despondently. ‘He wrote again, and this letter came straight here, so he must have had me traced in some way. He sent me the money for my air fare and said that if I let him know when I’d be arriving, he would hire a car to meet me at the airport, and I could drive out to St Jean des Roches—that’s where his chateau is. I—I had to reply, so I said I was ill,’ Clare concluded in the tone of one blessed with divine inspiration. ‘A few weeks went by and I heard nothing more, so I began to hope that he’d given me up as a bad job. Peter and I were engaged by now, and everything was sheer heaven. Then another letter arrived. It was totally different from the others—really hateful. He said he was sure I must have recovered by now and that the wedding had to take place almost at once.’ She sighed and bent her head. ‘I—I couldn’t very well ignore that, so I wrote to him and told him I’d changed my mind …’

‘You didn’t tell him about Peter?’

‘No, and I’m glad I didn’t.’ Clare’s pretty face became stormy. ‘Because this arrived back—by return of post, I should think.’ She extracted one of the letters from the bundle on her lap and handed it to Andrea.

‘Mademoiselle,’ it began unpromisingly, ‘Much as I may regret your sudden reluctance to proceed with our agreed contract, I have to tell you that my own plans are now too far advanced to permit any withdrawal on your part. Unless you present yourself here in accordance with our agreement, I shall take action against you for breach of promise. I have, you may remember, your written consent to the marriage.’

The letter was typewritten, but the signature was there, black and bold and uncompromising, the downstrokes with the pen thick and formidable as if they had been made by an angry man.

Andrea’s lips were compressed as she refolded the single thin sheet.

‘I think he means it,’ she said, meeting her cousin’s anxious look. ‘Can you still sue people for breach of promise?’

Clare shuddered. ‘I don’t know, but even if he can’t, there’s bound to be the most awful scandal. The newspapers have been looking for something involving Daddy for ages. I—I just can’t do it to him, Andy. He could have another attack—and this time it could be fatal. The specialist warned us …’ She began to cry again and Andrea looked at her with compassion.

‘Don’t worry, love.’ She gave Clare a quick hug. ‘It won’t happen. We won’t let it.’

‘We?’ Clare caught her breath on a little sob. ‘You mean you will help me?’

Andrea was taken aback for a moment. ‘Well, I’ll do anything I can,’ she said cautiously. ‘Only it’s difficult to see what …’

‘The first thing is to get that letter back—the one where I said I’d marry him.’ Clare sat up eagerly, miraculously restored to optimism. ‘And that contract thing. I must have been mad!’

‘Yes,’ Andrea agreed drily. ‘What are you going to do? Write and ask him for them so that you can check if they’re legally binding? I don’t think he’ll swallow that somehow.’

‘No, of course he wouldn’t. You’ll have to go to St Jean des Roches and steal them back. He’s bound to keep them at the chateau.’

‘I’ll have to go …’ Words momentarily failed Andrea, then she looked squarely at her cousin. ‘No, Clare.’

‘But it’s the obvious solution. I daren’t go myself. He might force me to do—anything.’

‘And what will he do when I arrive—get out the welcome mat, I suppose.’ Andrea gave her an irritated look.

‘Well, he would—if he thought you were me,’ Clare said.

‘Now I know you’re mad,’ Andrea said faintly. ‘You really think I’m going to career halfway across France and pretend to be you in order to steal some letters from a man whom by your own admission you’ve led up the garden path. You say yourself you dare not go anywhere near him. If he thinks I’m you, he might force me into—anything!’

‘No, no.’ Clare spoke soothingly. ‘If anything like that were to happen, you would simply tell him who you were. He has no hold over you, after all.’

Andrea stared at her wonderingly. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ she managed at last.

‘I’ve had precious little else to think about,’ Clare said tartly. ‘I couldn’t possibly go. I’ve got the wedding to get ready for, for one thing, and Peter would think it very odd if I dropped all the preparations and disappeared to France. And I can’t delay much longer, or this Levallier man will come to London and then everyone will know.’ She shivered and turned pleading eyes on Andrea. ‘Peter would be so angry. He might leave me. And his beast of a mother would encourage him—she’s always hated me. Oh, Andy, if I lose Peter, I don’t know what I’ll do. I shan’t want to go on living.’

Andrea looked at her coldly. ‘You could always marry this—Levallier. It can’t have seemed such a repulsive prospect at one time.’

‘You’re utterly heartless.’ Clare’s lips were trembling ominously again. ‘And I thought you would understand.’

‘I do understand—I think.’ Andrea gave an exasperated sigh. ‘But it’s not as simple as you seem to think. You’re asking me to commit an actual crime—to steal some letters.’

‘But they’re my letters.’ Clare looked at her wide-eyed.

‘I think the law takes a different view,’ Andrea said grimly.

‘Oh—the law.’ Clare dismissed the combined weight of French and British justice with a wave of her hand. ‘I wrote that letter, and I want it back. And you’re the ideal person to get it for me!’

‘How have you arrived at that conclusion? Is there some criminal element in the family that I don’t know about?’

‘No, but you do work in public relations, so you’re used to dealing with awkward people. And you are owed some leave—I heard you telling Mummy so last week.’ She paused, her eyes searching her cousin’s unyielding face. ‘Andy, if you won’t do it for me, do it for Daddy. He’s always treated you as if you were his own daughter …’

‘If you’re reminding me that he paid for my school fees as well as yours, it’s unnecessary.’ The colour was suddenly heightened in Andrea’s cheeks. ‘Blackmail must be catching, I think.’ She stood up abruptly and reached for her suede coat and bag.

‘Now I’ve made you angry,’ Clare said disconsolately. ‘I didn’t mean it, Andy. I’m just so worried.’

‘I know.’ Andrea relented slightly as she studied the woebegone figure. ‘All I can promise is that I’ll think about it. There must be some solution.’

‘Oh, there is,’ Clare said flatly. ‘I can write and tell him to go to hell.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘Oh, Andy, there’d be the most dreadful row. If there was a court case, it would be in all the papers. It would destroy Mummy and Daddy. They’ve worked so hard to keep our private lives —private.’ Her eyes widened as another dreadful thought occurred to her. ‘They might even find out about Jacques and drag him into it.’

Andrea’s thoughts were troubled as she descended the staircase to the hall. Although she had resented Clare’s words, they had struck home, she was forced to acknowledge. Her own parents were dead, her father when she was a small child, her mother more recently. But this large London house had been a second home to her for as long as she could remember. Without a hint of patronage, neither Uncle Max nor Aunt Marian had ever allowed her to want for anything. Nor had she felt any sense of obligation—until now.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and stood for a moment, rummaging in her bag for her car keys. Whatever happened, it was essential that the news of Clare’s folly should be kept from her uncle, she thought. She had been in London when he had suffered that first attack, and had stayed with her aunt, and she knew better than Clare just how precarious his health was, and how entirely necessary it was that he should have a considerable period without stress or worry.

She gave a little restless sigh, and stood turning the keys in her hands, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the parquet floor. If Peter had been a different sort of man, she thought she might have gone to him and pleaded for Clare. But as things were, she knew Clare was right to keep it from him. His conventional soul would be shocked to its core, and he would possibly decide that all his mother’s none too subtle hints about Clare’s unsuitability as a wife were well founded. In all justice, Andrea supposed that Lady Craigie had right on her side. Clare’s sowing of her wild oats had been pretty blatant at times, and Jacques, of whose existence Aunt Marian and Uncle Max were fortunately unaware, had been one of many. Clare had teetered on the edge of disaster on a number of occasions—Andrea recalled with a shudder an abortive plan to move in with a pop singer shortly before her mercurial cousin had taken off for Paris—and it was a miracle that she hadn’t been involved in more than one set of unsavoury headlines before now.

And yet for all her wildness, there was something very sweet about Clare. At times, she could be almost touchingly naïve and trusting, and Andrea had often consoled herself over Peter’s dullness with the thought that his reliability and worthiness might be the shield from her worse self that Clare needed.

She was brought back to earth with a start as the drawing door opened and Aunt Marian came out.

‘So there you are, dear. Clare is naughty to keep you all to herself. Max has gone to bed early, and I’ve no one to drink my chocolate with. Come and keep me company.’

Andrea complied with less than her usual willingness. Aunt Marian was no fool, and she was not convinced of her own ability to keep her inner disturbance to herself. She sank down on to one of the luxurious sofas and took the cup she was handed.

‘Have you been talking weddings?’ Aunt Marian busied herself with the tall silver pot. ‘Max said today he was thankful that Clare was our only daughter. He didn’t think he could bear to live through all this uproar a second time.’ She smiled across at Andrea affectionately. ‘But he’ll make an exception for you, dear. When can we start planning your wedding?’

Andrea smiled back constrainedly. ‘Oh, there’s no one at the moment—no one serious anyway,’ she said. ‘I think Uncle Max has a few more years of peace ahead of him still once Clare is off his hands.’

‘Hmm.’ Aunt Marian’s eyes studied her for a moment, taking in the slim yet rounded figure, the creamy skin and the soft, vulnerable girl’s mouth. ‘I don’t understand today’s young men at all. When I was a girl, you’d have been snapped up in your first season.’

Andrea sighed. ‘Maybe I don’t want to be snapped up,’ she pointed out. ‘I do have a career.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Aunt Marian’s tone made it clear what she thought about careers. ‘I’m just thankful that Clare seems settled at last. I can speak frankly to you, dear, and I think you know how worried your uncle and I have been over the past two years. We’ve never wanted to interfere—to stop her living her own life, but there have been times when I’ve been so frightened for her—frightened that she’d take some disastrous step that she wouldn’t be able to recall. Some of the men she’s been involved with …’ Aunt Marian shuddered slightly. Her eyes looked shrewdly at Andrea. ‘I know you don’t think Peter is very exciting, dear, but he’ll be so good for Clare, believe me he will.’

Andrea forced a smile. ‘Yes, I do believe it. I just wish that he was a little more …’ she paused, searching for the right word.

‘Demonstrative,’ her aunt supplied. ‘I thought so too at first, but now I’m not so sure these outward displays of affection mean a great deal. Clare seems perfectly happy with the situation. She says Peter is shy, and she may be right. It would certainly explain his rather stiff manner sometimes.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Andrea, setting her cup down on the small table in front of her. ‘How is Uncle Max?’

‘Behaving very well—avoiding stress and doing what he’s told,’ his wife said affectionately. ‘And Clare’s happiness has helped his peace of mind as well. He’s even talking of giving up the board altogether and retiring early. He would like to have more time to devote to his charity work, and I’m all for it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I don’t suppose I should be telling you this, but there’s talk of a knighthood in the next Honours list—something he’s always dreamed of.’

‘But that’s wonderful!’ Andrea forgot other worries momentarily in her pleasure for her uncle who had given so much of his time for children’s charities in recent years. ‘And of course, I won’t mention it to a soul. Is it definite?’

‘Almost, I would say,’ her aunt conceded smilingly. ‘As long as nothing happens to spoil it for him.’ She sighed. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’m so delighted about Clare. Your uncle’s very old-fashioned in some ways, you know, and he has very strong views on the honours system and all it stands for. He wouldn’t countenance anything that might bring it into disrepute. And I’ve always known that if Clare had ever done anything really—foolish, something that might cause a public scandal—these gossip columnists can be quite unscrupulous, dear—then he wouldn’t accept the knighthood.’

‘You can’t be serious.’ Andrea stared at her aunt, her brows wrinkled frowningly. ‘Uncle Max can’t still regard himself as responsible for Clare’s dottiness. She’s a grown woman.’

Aunt Marian gave a slight smile. ‘If she were a grandmother, I don’t think it would alter his attitude in the slightest degree. He doesn’t approve of this decline in morals they talk about. He feels people in public life should set an example—he always has done.’ She sighed. ‘Of course, I’ve never breathed a word of this to Clare herself. I didn’t want to burden her with that kind of responsibility, but I don’t know whether I was right. Anyway, she’s found Peter, so I no longer have any worries on that score.’

Andrea looked at her aunt for a long moment, registering the air of serenity that hung almost tangibly about her. Could she really sit back and see that destroyed? she thought despairingly. Clare was a fool, but marriage to Peter might be the salvation of her, after all.

She got up, forcing a smile.

‘Excuse me, will you? I’ve just remembered—there’s something I have to tell Clare.’

Andrea pulled the car into the side of the road, applied the brakes and sat for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she twisted round in her seat and stared back grimly, assimilating almost with disbelief the road she had just ascended.

The late October sun hung low over the valley, and she could see the road like a thin white ribbon winding along the valley side, disappearing at intervals into sheltering clumps of bare trees. On one side of her there had been a towering wall of forbidding black rock, on the other an unfenced drop down to the gleam of the river far below her. She was thankful that the long drive from Paris had given her a chance to at least familiarise herself with the car before she was faced with these conditions, and she had clung to the wheel with grim determination as she mounted through a succession of hairpin bends, praying she would not meet anything coming in the opposite direction.

She looked at the heavy clouds massing in the west and grimaced. All during the drive, the weather had been perfect—golden and autumnal. She had put to the back of her mind all the things she had heard about Auvergne—a place of storms, she’d read somewhere, where the weather was eternally in conflict with itself. Judging by those clouds, war would soon be declared once again!

She reached for her road map and sat studying it, her brows furrowed slightly. Blaise Levallier was making few concessions to his future wife, she thought, asking her to make her own way to this inaccessible place. In itself, this seemed to contain an element of warning, silently conveying the amount of courage and self-sufficiency it would require to survive in this bleak mountain region with its dead volcanoes, and buildings that seemed to have been hewn from solid lava. Yet, in spite of her nervousness, Andrea had to acknowledge its strange compelling beauty. And of course, she told herself, she was not going to be asked to survive here. She gave a slight mischievous grin as she imagined what Clare, a nervous driver at the best of times, would have said when confronted with the valley road she had just traversed. That might have been one way of solving the problem, she thought, stifling her mirth. How would the unknown Blaise Levallier have coped with a bride who applied her handbrake and stubbornly refused to budge? Anyone as determined as he seemed to be would probably have hired a tractor from one of the hill farms and had her dragged to St Jean des Roches.

She sobered slightly as she put her map away. She had only a few kilometres to go to her destination, and the thought was singularly unappealing. A warning voice inside her seemed to be saying it still wasn’t too late to turn the car around and drive back to the comparative sanity of Clermont-Ferrand. She could leave the car there and get a train back to Paris. If Clare had been her sole consideration in all this, she might just have done it, she thought as she re-started the car.

She had made that brutally clear to Clare as well, not just that first night when she had reluctantly agreed to go to St Jean des Roches in her cousin’s place, but during the subsequent discussions that had taken place. Clare seemed convinced that the incriminating papers would be quite easy to find, but Andrea was not so sure.

‘Ask to see them,’ Clare had suggested. ‘Say you’re not too sure about the wording—oh, you’ll think of something.’

‘I’ll have to,’ Andrea conceded rather drily.

She had read Blaise Levallier’s letters, especially the last one, a dozen times, until she felt every word was imprinted on her memory, and as she read, a slow anger was kindled. Who was this man who thought he could threaten the people she loved and damage their happiness and well-being with impunity? He was simply not going to get away with it. Clare might have been an utter fool, but at least she had seen the error of her ways in time, and he should have had the decency to release her from the ludicrous promise she had made him when she asked him to. Was he so unfeeling that the thought of life with a girl he had literally forced into marriage and for whom he could have no emotional attachment could actually seem tolerable?

If so, his reasons for wanting this hasty marriage must be extremely cogent ones. She had questioned Clare closely about them, but Clare had destroyed the earlier correspondence with him long ago, and was aggravatingly vague about their contents. She maintained, however, that he had not been at all specific, except about the urgency of his need for a wife at least on paper. That he had said it was ‘a legal necessity’ was almost all Clare could recall. Andrea had brooded about those words, but they still conveyed very little to her. She had also tried to probe further into the reasons for Martine’s family’s strong disapproval of their distant cousin, but she’d met with no more success here. The most Martine’s parents had let drop were veiled hints, Clare said. But if he regularly made a habit of blackmailing people to get his own way, he was far from being a desirable connection for the eminently respectable Montcours, Andrea thought.

The more she considered what lay ahead of her, the more her apprehension grew. She must be as crazy as Clare to imagine she could get away with this. Just what kind of a man was she going to find waiting for her at St Jean des Roches? she asked herself. Apart from being simply undesirable, had he been guilty of some crime, that he was so reluctant to show his face in more civilised places, and had to find himself a wife by correspondence? And if he was such a villain, what chance did she have to outface him? Andrea sighed. It had never seemed more certain that she was heading for big trouble, but she seemed to be committed now. If she did not arrive at the chateau, Blaise Levallier would undoubtedly set enquiries in train as to her whereabouts, and this would lead to all the problems she had come here precisely to obviate. No, she had to go on. Get in, get the papers, and get out, she told herself. In theory it sounded simple.

She groaned slightly as the first raindrops spattered against the windscreen, and set the wipers in motion. That was all she needed—a strange road, and a rainstorm.

She wondered what Blaise Levallier had thought when he received Clare’s meek letter, accepting his terms and telling him the date of her arrival. They had expected some kind of response, probably gloating, but there had been none. She had half hoped that the promised car would not be at the airport so that she would have a golden excuse to take the next plane back to London, but her hope had not been fulfilled. Blaise Levallier might waste no time on unnecessary letters, but his arrangements were efficient enough.

One of the major difficulties confronting her was that she had little idea precisely how much Clare had disclosed about herself during this brief early correspondence she had had with this stranger. It was fortunate that she and Clare had always been on such close terms, she thought, but she still felt anxious. Once again, Clare’s memory had been vague, but she insisted that she had not mentioned her parents, or her background. Her letters had concentrated more on the good time she was having in Paris. Andrea wrinkled her nose. Clare’s idea of a good time was not always hers, she reflected, and she would have to explain away any discrepancies with the excuse of a poor memory. She also realised that Clare’s personality emerged through her letters to a certain extent, and that she would have to act a part for some of the time at least. It was an unnerving thought, but she told herself that if she was very lucky, she might have completed her task and got away from the chateau before any potentially embarrassing explanations or situations arose.

It was suddenly much darker, the friendly sun hidden now by the threatening clouds, and in the distance she heard a low rumble of thunder, curling away. It’s a good job I’m not superstitious, she thought, or I might think it was an omen.

The rain had settled to a steady downpour by the time she reached St Jean des Roches some half an hour later, and her neck and shoulders ached from the concentration needed to hold the car on the winding and unfamiliar road.

The village looked little different from others she had passed through on the way, a huddle of houses around a main square with a central fountain. A pale-washed campanile reared itself towards the lowering skies. Beyond the square, the road led upwards again at a gradient which set her nerves twitching. Whoever had christened this place had not been mistaken, she thought. The village itself seemed to have been literally carved out of the side of a rock and she supposed the chateau must be perched dizzily at its summit, somewhere above her.

Her headlights picked out a building of sorts ahead of her and she slowed, peering through the windscreen, uncertain that she had reached the right place. It appeared to be a gatehouse, arching over the road, but the gates themselves were missing, she realised as she drove cautiously through the narrow opening.

For a moment, she thought her lights picked out a face at one of the gatehouse windows, staring down at her, and then her attention was totally diverted by what lay ahead of her. She braked and switched off the engine. Then she sat, staring around at the scene illuminated before her. Slowly and incredulously, she thought, ‘But it can’t be true … this can’t be the place!’

A chateau in Auvergne, Clare had said, but the picture she had formulated in her mind bore no resemblance to this—ruin she was faced with. How many years of neglect had been needed to produce this effect? she wondered as her eyes wandered over the dark bulk of the building, and the graceful pepperpot tower which rose at one side of it like something from a mediaeval fairytale. There had been a wing once, jutting from the other end of the building, opposite to the tower, but much of it seemed now to consist merely of tumbled masonry. And the main building was dilapidated in the extreme. There were tiles missing from the sloping roof, and on the first floor, some shutters hung crazily from the windows.

She tried to tell herself it was a mistake, and that no one actually lived there, but a thread of smoke hanging above one of the chimneys told her she was mistaken.

Andrea felt anger rising slowly within her. How dared anyone have let this little jewel of a place decay like this? she thought wildly. And was this really where Blaise Levallier expected gay, comfort-loving Clare to live through the bitter Auvergne winter? It would be like asking a hothouse orchid to flourish at the North Pole. She switched off her lights as if the sudden darkness that descended could also obliterate the reality.

Could he, when he had traced Clare, have learned that she was a considerable heiress? Was this why he had tried to force through their strange marriage so high-handedly? Perhaps Clare’s money was intended to restore all this crumbling glory of the past. A sudden gust of anger overcame her and with it a new determination to outwit this man, and she slammed down her hand on the horn, waking the echoes with its blare.

For a moment nothing happened, then the great central door swung open and a woman appeared carrying an enormous black umbrella. Andrea watched her for a moment as she struggled across the weed-strewn courtyard, avoiding the puddles that had rapidly collected in the broken flagstones, then, setting her chin, she collected her handbag and threw open the driver’s door.

The wind had risen, she realised, as a sudden gust caught at her, dragging her hair free of the chiffon scarf which confined it at the nape of her neck. She had to catch hold of the car to steady herself.

‘Mademoiselle!’ The woman had reached her side and was struggling to hold the umbrella over her head. ‘Permettez-moi. Je vous souhaite bienvenue à St Jean des Roches.’

Somewhat faintly, Andrea murmured her thanks, and found her hand tucked firmly through the woman’s arm. Is she frightened that I’ll blow away, or run? she wondered as they started off across the courtyard, heads bent against the stinging rain. As they reached the open door, Andrea remembered something.

‘Oh, my case!’ She turned to go back for it, but the woman tugged at her insistently, mouthing something at her. Andrea could not make out precisely what she said, but she gathered that someone named Gaston would be delighted to fetch her case for her at a later time, but that now Monseigneur was waiting.

And we can’t have that, can we? Andrea thought caustically as she went into the chateau.

The door led directly into what Andrea surmised had originally been the Great Hall of the chateau, but which now shared in the general air of dilapidation. Her first comprehensive glance took in an enormous fireplace, chill and empty, dominating one wall. A table carrying a large old-fashioned oil lamp had been placed against another, and a case of guns hung above it. A few threadbare rugs which might once have been valuable covered the stone floor.

The huge umbrella was quickly shaken free of surplus water and deposited back in a stand beside the main door, holding in addition a number of walking sticks. Then the woman turned to Andrea with a beaming smile, introducing herself as Madame Bresson, the housekeeper. Having said it, she gazed round the hall and gave a deep sigh—as if aware that their surroundings were not a great advertisement for her capabilities, Andrea thought with faint amusement. She herself felt it would take an army of Madame Bressons to restore the chateau to anything approaching its former glory. As she crossed the hall in the housekeeper’s wake, she noticed, that the tapestry seat covers on several of the high-backed chairs standing against the walls were worn into holes.

One wave of the magic Weston money wand, and the whole chateau will turn back into a pumpkin, she thought angrily.

They stopped outside a heavy door, its timbers pitted with age and wear. Madame Bresson knocked briskly and pushed the door open almost in the same gesture, then motioned encouragingly for Andrea to precede her into the room.

Andrea swallowed, her hands clenching themselves in-voluntarily into fists at her side, then she stepped across the slightly raised threshold.

It was a much smaller room, the walls panelled from floor to ceiling, and while shabby it presented some appearance of comfort. The large table occupying its centre had been set with a white cloth and cutlery, and a fire had been kindled in the wide fireplace.

A man was standing at the fireplace, one arm resting on the ornate stone overmantel. He was tall, Andrea saw, and slim to the point of leanness with long legs thrust into well-polished riding boots. She assimilated thick black hair, unwaving and rather longer than was strictly fashionable, and a dark arrogant face, high-nosed and hard-mouthed. Whatever she had expected, it hadn’t been this, she found herself thinking confusedly. When she had tried to picture her unknown adversary, it had been a much older man who had dominated her mind’s eye—thick-bodied and debauched. This man was in his late thirties, if she was any judge, and undeniably attractive.

Then he swung round to face her fully, and Andrea could not control her gasp of dismay. The proud face was marred, perhaps irrevocably, by the long scar which twisted the corner of his left eye and distorted the clean line of the high cheekbone. And even as she thought savagely, Damn Clare for not telling me, the realisation dawned that Clare could not have known.

Was this why Blaise Levallier had felt bound to carry out his wooing, such as it was, by letter? she wondered dazedly, and crushed away the instinctive feeling of compassion that accompanied the thought. The last thing this man wanted would be pity, especially from her.

As if he could guess what she was thinking, he paused a few feet away from her, a faint derisive smile curling the firm lips. His eyes were as dark and hard as the volcanic rocks under his feet as he looked her over.

‘Mon amour!’ Could she detect a note of mockery in the timbre of that low-pitched, slightly husky voice? ‘So you’ve come to me at last.’

Too shocked to protest, she felt long arms drawing her inexorably towards him. She closed her eyes instinctively as the scarred face approached hers. She felt as if she was in a dream, and then dreams were dispelled for ever by the devastating reality of his mouth on hers.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR one suffocating moment Andrea felt the hard pressure of his muscular body against hers. The sound of the closing door behind her, signalling the departure of Madame Bresson, jerked her back to her senses, and she tore herself free of his arms, facing him with flaming cheeks.

‘That was not part of the agreement.’ She wanted to sound cool and in control of the situation, but to her annoyance her voice came out high and breathless like a little girl’s. Anyone would think she had never been kissed before in her life, she thought vexedly.

He shrugged, and again she was aware of that faint amusement.

‘Yet it was the reaction expected of us, and it is dangerous to ignore the conventions on these occasions. Our—arrangement is a private one. I imagine you do not wish it to become a matter for speculation in the village.’

She bit her lip. ‘No, of course not. I—I wasn’t thinking. You—you rather took me by surprise.’

‘Evidémment,’ he murmured. ‘I shall have to signal my intentions more clearly in future.’

Now how would Clare react to that? Andrea wondered confusedly. Coquettishly, probably, knowing her. But it was not a response she would dare to try with this man. His scarred face was unimportant. There was about him a kind of sensual magnetism which transcended ordinary physical appeal. Yet she should be able to handle him. She was used to working with men, treated as their equal. Any emotional involvements there had been, she had kept on the lightest possible level.

For one crazy moment she thought, ‘I’m frightened of him—frightened of what he could make me feel emotionally.’ And then a warning shutter came down in her mind, telling her that she was being nonsensical, and that her senses were playing tricks because she was overtired after the drive.

‘Did the journey cause you any problems?’ he asked, and it occurred to her that he spoke excellent English. She recalled that Clare had mentioned something about him having possibly spent some time abroad.

‘No. It’s not the first time I’ve driven on the Continent.’ She sounded impossibly stilted, she thought.

‘Perhaps not, but you did not give me the impression that you were totally confident in your driving ability.’

That was her first slip, Andrea told herself furiously. She might have known Clare would probably have poured out her numerous driving mishaps. She had a knack of making them sound feminine and absurd.

She shrugged slightly, making herself smile. ‘Well, I didn’t actually kill anyone on the way.’

‘God is merciful.’ The scarring gave him the look of a satyr, it occurred to her. ‘Permit me to take your coat.’

She tensed involuntarily as his hands came down on her shoulders, but this time his touch was as impersonal as she could have wished.

A heavy wooden settle stood on one side of the fireplace and he invited her to take a seat on it with a wave of his hand. He remained standing.

‘Dinner will not be long.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Would you care for an aperitif, or would you prefer to go to your room before the meal is served?’

‘I’m quite glad to be sitting still,’ she said frankly. ‘Besides, my cases are still in the car.’

‘Ah, yes. You will wish Gaston to fetch them.’ He tugged at a frayed tapestry bell pull hanging at the side of the fireplace and a bell jangled faintly in the distance. He walked over to the massive, heavily carved sideboard against one wall and picked up a bottle, turning to her with raised eyebrows. ‘Dubonnet? Or do you prefer sherry?’

‘Dubonnet will be fine,’ Andrea said rather helplessly. The situation was fast slipping out of her control. Here she was having a pre-dinner drink with this man as if he was merely her courteous host and nothing more. It was unthinkable that they were going to spend the evening mouthing a lot of polite nothings at each other. There was so much she needed to know. First and foremost it was essential to discover if there was any likelihood of him voluntarily relinquishing his plan to marry Clare even at this late stage. She glanced up with a shy word of thanks as he handed her the drink, and registered the bitter, almost brooding look he wore, and the hard lines of his chin and mouth. He did not look the sort of man who could be easily persuaded about anything, she thought uneasily.

‘We’ll drink a toast.’ Once again she was aware of that quiet element of mockery. ‘To our—better acquaintance, mademoiselle.’

She murmured something indistinguishable as he touched his glass to hers, and hoped he would blame the heat of the fire for the sudden colour which tinged her face. It was a relief when the door opened and a short stocky man with a brown weatherbeaten face and round, rather staring eyes ambled in.

‘M’sieur?’

‘Ah, Gaston.’ Blaise Levallier turned to him, and spoke a few quiet words in his own tongue. Then he turned to Andrea.

‘He will need your keys, mademoiselle.’

She hesitated a moment, oddly reluctant to part with them. The car was her passport to safety, after all, and it gave her a sense of security to know that its keys were in her keeping.

‘You need not worry. Gaston is simple, it is true, but he is also completely trustworthy and devoted to my family.’ Blaise Levallier sounded ironic. ‘He is perfectly capable of rescuing your baggage and taking it to your room, I promise you.’

She flushed more hotly, annoyed that she was unable to justify her hesitation. She delved into her handbag and produced the key-ring, dropping it into Gaston’s waiting palm, murmuring her thanks.

When the door had closed behind him, Blaise Levallier said, ‘He speaks no English, I should warn you, but I don’t think you will have any difficulty in making him understand you. Madame Bresson—Clothilde—is his aunt and has cared for him since he was a child. He helps with some of the heavy work around the chateau, and assists the herdsmen with the cattle. He is magnificent with the beasts and with the horses. He has a skill born of instinct.’

She nodded constrainedly and sipped her drink. It was essential, of course, for the future mistress of the chateau to be acquainted with these details, but it was a far cry from all she really needed to know. For a moment she found herself wondering how Clare would have reacted to Gaston. Her cousin had an undue sensitivity about all forms of abnormality, and would have had difficulty in adapting herself even to Blaise Levallier’s scarred face, she realised.

‘What—other help do you have?’

‘Very little, as you must have noticed, in the house. The land, of course, is different. But there we all work for each other.’

She looked up at him in surprise, and he explained.

‘In my forefathers’ day, the chateau took the best of everything—the best of the grazing, the most sheltered portions of the orchards, the finest sites for the vineyards. It has been a policy that has bred poverty and resentment—both forces for destruction. Well, I prefer to construct, rather than destroy, so we have pooled our land and our resources and formed a co-operative. The time is past when the village could simply produce enough food and wine for its own needs and ignore the rest of the world. We make excellent wine—it needs a wider market. In time, too, we will have one of the finest breeding herds in Auvergne. St Jean des Roches will not become a dead village peopled by the elderly.’

‘And what part do you play in this—co-operative?’

‘I am its overall manager.’ He noted the rather satirical look Andrea sent him, and raised his hand. ‘Not because the feudal system still flourishes, I promise you. If I did not have the necessary skill, I would be labouring in the fields. I’ve served my apprenticeship in management on the plantations of Martinique and—other places.’ His smile jeered at her suddenly. ‘So if you thought you had come here merely to play the gracious chatelaine, ma mie, I’m afraid you must think again.’

‘I thought nothing of the sort,’ she said truthfully, and relaxed as a knock at the door signalled the arrival of Madame Bresson with their dinner.

Andrea had not realised how hungry she was until Madame lifted the lid off the earthenware pot in the middle of the table and disclosed the simmering cassoulet, chunks of pork, slices of country sausage and black-eyed beans swimming in a rich gravy, redolent of garlic and herbs. She made a token protest at the huge plateful that was put in front of her, and then ate every mouthful, assisting it on its way with wedges of fresh, warm bread. The wine they drank was one of the local vintages, Blaise told her, and she found it surprisingly mellow and full-bodied. She refused the cheese that followed, but accepted a cup of strong, black coffee.

‘So Clothilde’s cooking is to your liking?’ Blaise Levallier leaned back in his chair, watching her.

‘Very much,’ she agreed. ‘If I stayed here very long, I’d be as fat as …’ Her voice tailed away, as she realised with horror what she had just said.

‘It will be a metamorphosis that I shall observe with interest,’ he said smoothly, as if unaware of her slip.

Well, it was said, and it could not be unsaid, and now was the time, if ever, for her challenge to him.

She set her coffee cup back in its saucer very carefully.

‘Monsieur Levallier, I think you must realise as well as I do that this—this marriage cannot take place.’

‘You are incorrect, mademoiselle. I realise nothing of the sort.’

She heard the grimness in his voice, but persevered. ‘I—I agreed because I was—emotionally disturbed at the time. You can’t really intend to hold me to a promise made under such circumstances.’

‘Oh, but I can,’ he said almost idly, ‘and I will. Make no mistake about that, ma mie.’

‘But it would be too cruel,’ she said, her voice quivering, and shrank back from the sudden fury that glared at her from his eyes.

‘And do you imagine life has been so kind to me, that I am prepared to take that into consideration?’ he demanded harshly, his fingers straying as if in spite of himself towards his damaged face. ‘Spoiled from your cradle, what can you know of cruelty?’

‘Do I have to learn my first lesson from you?’ she flung at him, forgetful in that moment that it was not for herself that she spoke.

He shrugged. ‘The nature of the lesson will be your own choice, mademoiselle. But I warn you now, the marriage will go ahead as planned. It has already been delayed too long.’

‘Am I ever to be told why it’s so essential for you to be married?’

He poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘You have never displayed any particular curiosity before,’ he reminded her drily. ‘You seemed more preoccupied with your own—affairs. But there is no reason for you not to know. I am shortly to assume the guardianship of my nephew, and the terms of my brother’s will stipulate that I have to be a married man in order to do so. That is all.’

‘That’s quite enough!’ The breath left Andrea’s body in a gasp. So Clare was not merely to have been pitchforked into matrimony but into motherhood by proxy as well, she thought furiously. The nerve of this creature! ‘Why on earth did your brother include this—stipulation, if he knew you were a bachelor?’

‘At the time the will was made, I was expecting to be married—quite soon,’ he said, and there was a note in his voice that made her stomach constrict nervously. Her eyes went involuntarily to his scarred cheek, and he nodded sardonically. ‘You are very perceptive, mademoiselle. And more skilful at concealing your revulsion than my fiancée.’ He laughed shortly, without mirth. ‘It was a memorable few hours of my life. In the space of a day, I lost everyone in the world I most cared for. My nephew alone remains, and him I do not intend to lose.’

‘But surely, if you’re his only relative …’

‘But I am not,’ he cut in. ‘He has an aunt on his mother’s side. Unless I fulfil the conditions of the will, she intends to contest the guardianship in the courts. All my money has been sunk into this co-operative. I cannot afford to fight her.’

‘But how old is this child? Wouldn’t he perhaps be better with his aunt?’ Andrea began, and quailed under the look he sent her.

‘No, he would not,’ he said briefly. ‘The child is my heir and his place is here, with his heritage.’

‘But what if you have a child of your own …’ Andrea said unthinkingly, and crimsoned as she realised the implication in her words.

‘Aren’t you afraid I might take you at your word?’ His eyes appraised her with sudden insolence. ‘What would you do, I wonder? What is that saying you have—close your eyes and think of England, or in this case, France?’

She pressed her hands to her burning face. ‘I didn’t mean …’ she stumbled, and his smile widened unpleasantly.

‘I believe you, mademoiselle. Don’t look so frightened. I would not demand a sacrifice of that magnitude. I am well aware that my—face would give nightmares to any woman forced to share my bed.’

She shrank from the bitterness implicit in his words. Someone—his fiancée?—must have said that, or something very like it, to him. It betrayed a lack of sensitivity and compassion that was almost inconceivable. Whoever this girl had been, he was well rid of her, she found herself thinking stormily, and checked herself sharply. No matter where her sympathies might instinctively lie, he was still her adversary.

She tried reason again. ‘Monsieur, you’ve been hurt, I know, but is that any reason to hurt in your turn? This—marriage would be a total disaster. We—we don’t know each other. What kind of a relationship could we have?’

Again she was conscious of that uncanny feeling that she was pleading not for Clare but for herself, and she shivered slightly.

‘You are cold? Come and sit by the fire.’ He got up and strode to the fireplace, flinging on a couple of logs from the basket that stood in the hearth.

‘I’m all right here, thank you,’ her voice faltered a little and he looked at her impatiently.

‘What are you frightened of? This relationship that is only a figment of your own imagination? All I require, mademoiselle, is a marriage on paper that will satisfy the lawyers and release Philippe into my custody. Once that has been achieved, you are free to go or stay as you please.’

‘But you can’t use me like this …’ she began hotly.

His eyes flashed. ‘You did not display the same aversion to using me to heal your pride over your broken love affair, ma mie. You were almost brutally frank on the subject. What was it you called me—a lifeline? You cannot now complain if that lifeline becomes a chain to bind you.’

She rose to her feet, pushing her hair back with a weary gesture.

‘I—I think I’d like to go to my room,’ she said. ‘I’m rather tired.’

‘Certainly. I will ring for Clothilde.’ He reached for the bell rope. Then he turned and walked back to her and stood looking down at her. ‘Sleep well,’ he said abruptly. ‘Perhaps everything will seem a little better in the morning, hein?’

She shook her head, suddenly unable to think of a single thing to say in reply.

For a moment he too was silent, looking down at her, and then almost casually he raised his hand and brushed one finger across her parted lips in a gesture that was almost more intimate than the kiss he had greeted her with on her arrival. She made herself stand her ground, refusing to allow herself to recoil in case he misinterpreted it as an act of repulsion. Whereas, if she was honest with herself, the opposite was true. Why else this almost terrifying tingle of awareness along her nerve-endings? It was a response, the implications of which she did not care to study too closely, and she was thankful when a tap on the door heralded the arrival of Madame Bresson.

The interior planning of the chateau was an architect’s nightmare, Andrea thought resignedly as she was led by the housekeeper up a winding stone staircase to the first floor. She found herself in a long, draughty passage at one end of which were a pair of imposing double doors. Andrea gathered from Madame Bresson that that was the chateau’s main bedroom, and was presumably occupied by the master of the house.

Her own room, she discovered with amusement and an odd sense of relief, lay in the opposite direction, and at a considerable distance. It was an altogether cosier apartment than she had anticipated, with a small fire burning on the hearth, and enormous old-fashioned furniture which gave a sense of reassurance. The bedstead too was massively constructed in oak, and Andrea wondered with a sinking heart whether the mattress would match it, but a surreptitious poke at it while Madame Bresson was making up the fire soon reassured her.

It was as Madame was wishing her a smiling ‘Bonne nuit’ that a thought occurred to her. ‘Oh—my keys!’

Madame raised her eyebrows in puzzled enquiry and Andrea elaborated. ‘The car keys. I gave them to Gaston so that he could fetch my cases, and I can’t see them anywhere.’

The housekeeper’s smile broadened. In a daze Andrea heard herself being advised to remain tranquil as Gaston would no doubt have given the keys to Monseigneur, who would arrange its return to the company it had been hired from. Mademoiselle, Madame added triumphantly, was not to concern herself. Monseigneur would arrange everything.

I bet he will, Andrea thought inwardly as the door closed behind Madame. She sank down on the edge of the bed with a feeling of desperation. She had relied so totally on having the car at her disposal for even a few days. Now she would have to depend on what the local bus service had to offer to get her away from this place.

She walked over to the fireplace and sank down on to the rug, holding out her hands to the comforting flames. Not for the first time, she bitterly regretted that she had ever become involved in this charade. Just for a moment she seriously contemplated finding her way back downstairs and telling Blaise Levallier the truth, throwing herself on his mercy, then she dismissed the thought, remembering how he had rejected her accusation that he was cruel.

She squared her shoulders slightly. No, there was little of the milk of human kindness left there, she told herself, and he deserved everything that was coming to him. If Clare’s foolish letter was in the chateau she would find it somehow and—Monseigneur could find another dupe to play his marriage game with him.

She gave a little shiver, and wondered why she did so. And at the same time, the thought occurred to her that the sooner she could get away from the chateau—and its master—the better it would be for her.

It rained again in the night. Andrea’s first intimation of the fact came when she was rudely awoken by water dripping on her face. Still half asleep, she dragged herself upright and lit the lamp beside her bed, spilling some of the matches as she did so. She stared upwards with mounting indignation as she registered the spreading patch of damp on the ceiling above the bed. She scrambled out of bed and tugged and manoeuvred the heavy bedstead a few inches to the right. Then she fetched the basin from the washstand and placed it to catch the water. There was no point in allowing the water to ruin yet another ceiling below, she thought crossly.

The fire was out, a pile of grey ash, and outside the wind had got up. Somewhere one of the broken shutters was banging monotonously each time a gust took it, and Andrea got back into bed feeling chilled and thoroughly out of temper. Between the sound of drips falling into the china basin and the banging shutter she would be lucky if she closed her eyes again for the rest of the night, she thought.

But it was her inner anxieties, more than exterior conditions, that kept her from sleep, she found. No matter how resolutely she tried to exclude him, the scarred face of Blaise Levallier kept intruding on her interior vision. She told herself she was being ridiculous. After all, he had no real power over her. She was free, white and just over twenty-one. The most she had to fear was his anger when he found out he had been deceived and with any luck she would be well away by then. But all the time, a nagging voice somewhere deep inside her kept telling her that it was not going to be that simple.

She sighed, huddling the fleecy softness of the duvet around her. It would be so easy to get involved, she thought, recalling the pang she had felt when Blaise had spoken of losing everyone he cared for in the space of a few hours. She wondered what had happened. Presumably he was referring to his brother’s death, so had the scarring on his face occurred at the same time? It seemed clear there was some connection, and that the subsequent loss of his fiancée was involved in the same web of bitterness.

She closed her eyes, willing her thoughts to be silent, but they would not obey. She found herself speculating about the girl Blaise had been engaged to. Somehow she imagined her small and blonde with a piquant face, like Clare. Was this because in her heart she knew her thoughtless cousin might well have reacted to his damaged face with the same selfish cruelty?

Intuitively, she knew that the visible scars were not the worst that Blaise Levallier carried. Shuttered behind that bleak hostility was a man who had once laughed and loved and expected to be married and raise a family. Now, as a substitute, he had decided on an emotionless relationship with a stranger, and any hopes for the future were pinned on his orphaned nephew. It was not a healthy situation, she told herself.

There was another puzzling aspect to it, too. Clare had told her and he had confirmed that he had spent much of his life abroad. But if he was the heir to this crumbling property, shouldn’t his duty have been to remain here? He had spoken of ‘heritage’, so obviously he was not indifferent to the fact that he was now lord of this particular manor.

She turned over resolutely, burying her face in the pillow. The linen was old, but had been of the finest quality, and it was charmingly scented with lavender. This was a bed for sweet dreams, not disturbing thoughts, she told herself determinedly, in spite of the leaking roof.

But the dreams which came when she at last fell into an uneasy sleep were as troubling as the thoughts had been. She stood in a ruined church, where stars peeped through the broken roof, and grass grew along the aisles. A man stood at the altar alone, endlessly awaiting a bride who did not come, and it was only when she tried to speak to him to comfort him, to run to him and touch his arm, that she realised that she was invisible, calling to him in a voice he could not hear.

When she awoke to find a ray of watery sunlight finding its way through a crack in the faded brocade curtains at the windows, she found her cheeks wet with tears.

She was angrily brushing the betraying drops away when Madame Bresson knocked at the door, and came in bringing a fresh jug of hot water for the washstand. She clucked distressfully at the sight of the bowl on the floor, and burst into a flood of largely incomprehensible explanations from which Andrea gathered that the majority of the bedrooms suffered in the same way during heavy rain, but that Gaston would be despatched to the roof that very morning to carry out some essential patchwork. After assuring herself that Andrea had everything she needed and could find her way downstairs to the dining room, she withdrew.

Andrea washed and dressed hastily in a pair of denim jeans, topped with a ribbed black polo-necked sweater. She looked about her with critical eyes as she went downstairs. The place was clean, certainly, but it was uncared for. There were some magnificent pieces of furniture, but they were not displayed to their best effect, and there were no flowers to be seen anywhere. She gave a little sigh. There might be no money for structural repairs, if Blaise Levallier was heavily committed to this farming co-operative of his, but it would take a very small outlay to make the interior of the chateau far more pleasant. Covers could be mended, she thought, and it might even be possible with care to dye some of the faded curtains. Then she checked herself abruptly. She had to remember why she was here, she told herself vehemently. The state of the chateau, or any of its occupants for that matter, was none of her concern. She would be better occupied in thinking about how she was going to get hold of Clare’s letter.

She was somewhat disconcerted to find Blaise Levallier already seated at the dining table, going through some mail. He did not look any more approachable in the cold light of day, she thought uneasily, as she slid into her place with a murmured greeting.

‘I hope you slept well, mademoiselle.’ The words were civil enough, but the tone of utter indifference in which they were spoken stung Andrea.

‘Not particularly.’ She shook out her table napkin, and helped herself from the basket of warm croissants.

His eyebrows rose. ‘You distress me.’ His voice was sardonic now. ‘May I ask why not?’

‘You may.’ She spread the croissant with jam and bit into it appreciatively. ‘The roof above my room leaks.’

He frowned swiftly. ‘Then you should naturally not have been given such a room. I will speak to Clothilde.’

‘Oh, it isn’t her fault.’ Andrea reached for the coffee pot and filled her cup. ‘She says all the rooms are the same.’

‘Mine is not.’

She gave him a dulcet smile. ‘Naturally,’ she agreed.

He lifted his cup and drank with a meditative air. ‘Then what do you suggest, mademoiselle? I hesitate to put forward the obvious solution …’

She hated herself for her faint, involuntary blush. ‘Naturally,’ she repeated, hanging on like grim death to the dulcet smile. ‘But you could also get the roof mended.’

He shrugged. ‘Gaston does what he can.’

‘So I’ve gathered, but perhaps it’s time you got a professional opinion—unless it’s your intention to have the house crumble about your ears eventually.’ She smiled at him again. ‘You’ll forgive my frankness, but I do have a vested interest in it now.’

That was good, she thought with satisfaction, and it should help allay any suspicions he might have about her motives. If she could convince him that she had given way to force majeure over their marriage, it would make her task very much easier.

‘Yes.’ He studied her for a moment, and she could sense he was puzzled. ‘You are—reconciled to our contract, then?’

‘I don’t seem to have much choice,’ she said, with a slight lift of her shoulders. ‘You’ve made it clear what will happen if I back out, and I couldn’t stand that.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder.

‘So I imagined.’ There was a wry satisfaction in his voice. ‘It would lead to the sort of publicity that neither of us desires, I am sure, apart from the probable injury to your father’s health.’

Andrea, who had just taken a mouthful of coffee, choked and had to replace her cup hastily on its saucer.

‘I—I don’t know what you mean,’ she managed at last.

‘No?’ His look was bleak. ‘I think I make myself perfectly clear, mademoiselle. Your father is an eminent man, and the deterioration in his health has caused a great deal of concern in circles with which I am well acquainted. You could not imagine I would make no enquiries about your background.’

She could not very well reply that they had been counting on it, she thought, her heart hammering unevenly.

‘I suppose not,’ she said at length. ‘That was why you knew you could threaten me, of course. Because of—Daddy.’

‘Hardly threaten, ma mie. I simply pointed out to you what the consequences would be if you failed to fulfil the terms of our agreement, and left the decision to your good sense.’

He was mocking her, she knew, and her resentment hardened.

‘I hope you think your victory is worth the means you had to stoop to to win,’ she said sharply.

‘That remains to be seen.’ He finished the coffee in his cup and stood up. ‘When you have finished breakfast, I thought you might like to ride with me. As you reminded me, you have a vested interest in the estate now, and you may be interested in the changes we are making.’

She was just about to inform him frankly that the only thing she could imagine worse than a morning in his undiluted company was a morning on horseback, when she remembered with dismay that Clare was a keen rider and had probably mentioned this in her letters. She nearly groaned aloud. She could always invent a headache or some other minor ailment, but this might arouse his suspicions, and this was the last thing she wanted. She could ride, but she had none of Clare’s equestrian flair, and she was nervous of horses.

She forced a smile. ‘That would be lovely,’ she agreed. ‘I—I’ll just get a jacket.’

‘Soit.’ He sent her a long look, and for the first time she noticed, inconsequentially, how long his eyelashes were. ‘Shall we say then that we will meet at the main door in—ten minutes’ time?’

As she came downstairs again, Andrea wondered if it would be possible to slip on the stairs and feign a sprained ankle. But as she came round the final curve of the stairs, she saw Blaise Levallier just below her glancing idly through an agricultural catalogue.

He glanced up at the sound of her step. ‘Docile—and punctual,’ he remarked. ‘You will make an admirable wife, ma mie.’

She glared at him in impotent silence. Crossing verbal swords with him would get her nowhere, she reasoned, and all past scores would be paid off anyway when she took her departure and he realised he no longer had the proof he needed of his hold over Clare.

She noted ironically that the stables were in much better condition than the house itself, and commented sweetly on the fact.

‘Perhaps because I find animals of considerably more value than human beings, mademoiselle,’ came the immediate retort, and she subsided angrily.

Her heart sank when Gaston led out the mare that Blaise had designated for her to ride. She was a far cry from faithful old Penelope on whose broad back a much younger Andrea had taken her first quaking lessons. She was a sprightly roan, who sidled and jumped and tossed her head, and her bright eyes spoke of mischief.

‘She needs exercise,’ said her tormentor, already astride his own horse, and looking, Andrea thought bitterly, as if he were part of it.

She looked round for Gaston to help her mount, but he had disappeared back into the stables, so she had to lead the reluctant Delphine over to an ancient mounting block and get herself somehow into the saddle. It was not a polished performance, but at least she found herself on the mare’s back, instead of spreadeagled on the ground when it was completed. So far, so good, she thought, her sense of humour aroused by the sheer absurdity of the situation.

If I break my neck, at least it will be one way out of this mess, she told herself philosophically.

But before they had been out for very long, Andrea knew that it was a very different part of her anatomy that was going to suffer. Apart from that, Delphine was proving the handful she had feared and more. Clare had always said that horses could sense who had the mastery, and it was clear that the mare had written her off as an easy touch. She began to take liberties almost as soon as they were out of the stable yard, refusing to respond to Andrea’s rather tentative pressure on the reins with a toss of her head, and even swinging aside to eat the grass from the verges at the side of the track. The moment of truth came when a large bird flew out of the hedge immediately in front of her, and she squealed with indignation and reared up, nearly unseating Andrea in the process. Humiliatingly but inevitably, Blaise Levallier was there, grabbing the reins and soothing the mare, at the same time forcing her to compliance.

‘Thank you.’ Andrea knew her face was crimson.

‘It is nothing.’ He gave her a narrow look. ‘Perhaps it was a mistake asking you to ride so soon. You must still be tired after your journey—and your sleepless night.’

Now why didn’t I think of that? Andrea asked herself in exasperation. Aloud she said, ‘Probably,’ in a wooden voice.

She took a firm grip on herself and the reins after that, determined to cope better. Certainly, in spite of everything, there was a great deal to enjoy. The air seemed to sparkle after the night’s rain, and the views as they continued to climb were breathtaking. Away in the distance she could glimpse the flattened cones of the puys, the dead volcanic mountains of Auvergne, while around them the trees still wore the last remnants of their autumn glory before the stark onset of winter.

Andrea felt so exhilarated that when they eventually reached a level, grassy stretch of ground she forgot to be nervous when the horses broke into a canter, and then a gallop. Delphine was no longer a monster, fixed on her undoing, but a lovely creature, fluid of bone and muscle, who merely wanted to share her pleasure in her own swift eagerness.

When they reined in, Andrea saw that from this vantage point it was possible to look down on the village and the chateau. Seen from above, it had an even more forlorn look, and Andrea stole a sideways look at her companion to see his reaction. The scarred side of his face was hidden from her, but his expression was bleak and brooding and she did not dare venture a remark.

At last, when she had begun to think he had forgotten her presence, he said ‘Allons!’ in an impatient tone, and they turned the horses and rode on.

The black mood that possessed him persisted as they toured the vineyards, and looked at the new bottling plant which had been installed. Andrea, somewhat to her own surprise, found she was genuinely interested in what was being achieved, and it was frustrating to have her questions answered in monosyllables.

At last she could hold her tongue no longer.

‘This ride was your idea, monsieur,’ she reminded him acidly. ‘If you want me to learn about the estate, you need to improve your teaching technique.’

The look he sent her was chilling, but he made no response. She was not altogether surprised, however, when she found they were on their way back to the chateau.

‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ she observed flippantly.

This time he did reply, and his voice was icy with rage. ‘It may all seem a joke to you, mademoiselle, from your secure English background, but to me and many others in this village, it is life and death. Do you know how many villages there are in France where old people sit in their houses alone, because their children have left—gone to the cities to find work? Do you even care? I doubt it. But I care. And I care too that my home—the house which my family has occupied for hundreds of years—is falling into a ruin about me. Do you imagine that I would have permitted this neglect? Regard it well, mademoiselle. That is what hate can do, and spite and revenge. It is not pretty, hein?’

‘Whose hate, monsieur?’

‘My father’s, mademoiselle. My younger brother was his favourite. He could not forgive me for being the elder and his heir. I could do nothing right—nothing that would please him, except absent myself. He could have stopped the rot then, if he had wished, but he did not wish. I do not think he cared if there was one stone standing upon another when I came into my inheritance. Every last franc was devoted to Jean-Paul, and to our plantation Belle Rivière.’

‘Your brother ran the plantation?’

‘Oui. It was his part of the inheritance. God knows I never grudged it to him. But there were problems. Several bad seasons—hurricanes, pests which destroyed the crop. At last my father ordered me to go there and put things right. It would have taken a miracle. By the time I arrived, Jean-Paul had speculated trying to recoup some his losses, and was facing ruin.’

He stopped abruptly, as if sensing her tension. The anger and bitterness died from his face as if a slate had been wiped clean.

‘But I am boring you, mademoiselle, with our sordid family squabbles. My father has been dead for two years, God rest his soul, and Jean-Paul and his wife are also at peace now. I am left to salvage what I can and make some kind of life for myself and Philippe.’

She moistened her dry lips, appalled at what he had let her see.

‘And Belle Rivière? What has happened to that?’

‘The house has gone,’ he said briefly. ‘It was—burned to the ground a year ago. The land is now leased to the government.’

Something warned her that now was not the time to probe any further. She stole a glance at him and saw that the scar was standing out livid against his tan.

Gaston was waiting to take the horses when they rode into the yard. The ground suddenly looked a long way down, Andrea thought wearily as she eased her aching rear. She felt agonisingly stiff, and was afraid her legs might give way under her through sheer reaction when she dismounted.

‘Permit me.’ Blaise Levallier appeared at her side. Gratefully, she freed her feet from the stirrups and allowed herself to slide from Delphine’s back into his waiting arms. Just for a moment she felt the brush of his warm body against hers, and knew an insane urge to press herself against him, savouring the intimate smell of his sweat.

As her feet touched the ground, she pulled herself away, her face flaming as if he could guess her wanton thoughts, and stumbled slightly.

‘Take care.’ His voice was courteous but impersonal. ‘If you ask Clothilde, she will prepare a hot bath for you. I will see you at dinner.’

He gave her a brief formal nod, before turning and striding away.

Andrea had to force herself not to turn and watch him go. She felt confused and disturbed by this sudden turbulence in her emotions. I hate him, she told herself almost desperately. I’ve got to hate him. And I must never let him touch me again.

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